Richards 
From  the  Forest  to  the  Foot 


< 


FROM  THE  FOREST 
TO  THE  FOOT 


BOSTON 

DRYSIDE    PRESS 
MDCCCXCIII 


COPYRIGHT,   1890 
BY  G.   L.  RICHARDS 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


DOWN  THE  AMAZON  TO   PARA. 


FROM  THE  FOREST  TO  THE  FOOT. 


bless  the  man  who  invented  sleep!" 
exclaims  Don  Quixote's  faithful  but 
drowsy  servitor,  and  it  is  easy  to  imagine  any  man 
who  reaches  shelter  from  the  shifts  and  rigors  of 
our  Northern  winter  breathing  with  no  less  de- 
voutness  :  "  God  bless  the  man  who  invented  rub- 
ber, and  especially  rubber  shoes  !  "  Strictly  speak- 
ing, rubber  was  not  invented,  of  course,  being  a 
natural  product,  but  in  those  qualities  which  multi- 
ply its  serviceableness  to  man  it  owes  as  much, 
if  not  more,  to  human  genius  than  to  Nature. 
Let  us  imagine  that  the  first  snow  of  the  winter 


has  fallen  and  that  the  rea< 
has  struggled  homewardj 
a  dark  night  through 
or  four  inches  of  slush, 
brownish-gray  mixture  into 
which  first  snow  so  often 
transforms  itself.  Being  a 
prudent  man  and,  as  such,, 
provided  with  "rubbers,"  bip| 
reaches"  his  household  dry- 
shod  and  in  a  temper  to  en- 
joy the  evening  indoofS:  « 
Curtains  are  drawn  and  a 
chair  is  placed  within  the  zone'of  warmth  diffused 
by  a  fire  of  crackling  logs,  hickory  or  maple,  which 
he,  with  die  consciousness  of  doing  one  thing 
superlatively  well,  has  built  him- 
self. Suppose,  then,  that  he 
should  give  a  thought  to  that 
pair  of  rubber  shoes  which  has 
been  of  so  much  service  to  him. 
(ffs  thought  takes  him  much 
further  afield,  and  into  more 
varied  scenes,  than  a  hasty  ob- 
server would  believe,  and,  bit  by 
PR^  he  finds  the  story  of  the  dis- 
covery of  rubber  and  the  utiliza- 


tion  of  it  for  man's  benefit  unfolding  itself  with 

more  interest  'than  the  novel  lying  unread  in  his 

lap.    As  in  a  panorama,  pict- 

ure after  picture  grows  be- 

fore him,  now  in  tropical 

groves    and    by   the  slug- 

gish    flow    of      Brazilian 

rivers,  now  of  dark  labo- 

ratories, in  the  vapor   of 

which  weary  inventors  are 

struggling  to  entice  from 

Nature  some  secret  which 

she  refuses  to  reveal  ;  now  in  enormous  factoi 

rapidity  and  by  the  most 
perfect  processes,  a  vegetable 
exudation   is   converted   into 
He  most  indispensable  article 
f*  civilized     clothing.      He 
ees,  too,  in  all  its  pathos  of 
inalienable  purpose,  unswerv- 
ng endeavor    and    unceasing 
toil,    the     life    of    the    man 
^who,    by    unparalleled    perse- 
verance,    at    last    compelled 
ature  to  give  up  that  which 
d  so  long  been  hidden  in 
her  bosom. 


n 


THE   DISCOVERY   OF   RUBBER 

THE  existence  of  rubber  and  a  knowledge  of 
its  peculiar  and  useful  properties  must  have 
been  known  to  the  Mexican  Indians  many  years 
before  its  discovery  by  the  whites.  The  first  men- 
tion of  it  was  made  by  Herrara  in  his  account  of 
the  second  voyage  of  Columbus,  wherein  he 

speaks  of  a  ball  used 
by  the  Indians  made 
from  the  gum  of  a 
tree,  which  was  light- 
er and  bounced  bet- 
ter than  the  far-famed 
wind  balls  of  Castile. 
Torquemada.writing 
half  a  century  later, 
also  speaks  of  rub- 
ber which  he  found 
used  by  the  natives  as 
a  remedial  agent  in 


cases  of  hemorrhages  and  similar  diseases.  Mixed 
and  drunk  with  cocoa,  it  made  an  excellent  healing 
emollient  for  the  lungs,  and 
applied  externally  it  possessed 
properties  of  special  value  in 
removing  tightness  of  the 
chest.  So,  at  its  earliest  intro- 
duction, we  find  rubber  admin- 
istering to  the  wants  of  man,' 
both  in  his  idle  moments  and 
when  he  sought  relief  from 
suffering. 

The    first  accurate  informa- 
tion regarding   this  wonderful 
plant    was     furnished    by    La 
Condamine,  a  French  scientist 
who   was  sent  in    1735    by  his  Government  to 
measure  an  arc  of  the  meridian  near  Quito.     This 
brought  him  to  the  heart  of  the  rubber-growing 

f  section,  and  much  valuable  information 
was  the  result.  Nevertheless,  rubber 
remained  practically  unknown,  except 
as  a  curiosity,  for  many  years  after,  and 
it  was  near  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  when  Dr.  Priestly,  in  a  preface 
to  his  work  on  Perspective,  called  pub- 
lic attention  to  it  as  "a  novelty  for 


erasing  pencil  marks,"  stating  that  "it  is  sold  in 
conical  pieces  of  half  an  inch  for  three  shillings 
each."  For  this  purpose  it  was  imported  into  Eng- 
land, but  it  found  no  particular  sphere  of  useful- 
ness, beyond  the  modest  requirements  of  artists,  till 
about  1820,  nearly  three  hundred  years  after  its 
first  introduction  to  civilization.  The  successful 
manufacture  of  surgical  instruments  was  then  ac- 
complished, and  a  suspicion  of  the  wonderful  ca- 
pacities of  this  strange,  new  product  began  to 
suggest  itself,  and  the  world  of  commerce  awoke 
to  the  fact  that  a  new  force  had  entered  the 
industrial  field,  that  was  destined  to  play  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  arts  and  manufactures  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 


^*!  r  ) 

DISCOVERY    OF    VULCANIZING. 

AT  this  point  the  inventor  comes  on  the  scene 
—to  whom  reference  has  already  been 
made  —  Charles  Goodyear.  Various  attempts 
had  been  made  to  use  rubber  for  clothing,  for 
shoes,  coats  and  hats,  but  they  had  not  been  suc- 
cessful. Daniel  Webster  used  to  tell  of  a  rubber 
cloak  and  hat  which  a  New 
York  friend  had  sent  to  him 
at  Marshfield.  He  took  the 
cloak  to  the  piazza,  one  cool 
morning,  when  it  instantly 
became  as  rigid  as  sheet  iron. 
Finding  that  it  stood  alone, 
he  placed  his  hat  upon  it  and 
left  the  articles  standing  near 
the  front  door.  Several  of 
passed,  seeing  a  dark  and 
portly  figure  there,  took  it,  as  Mr.  James  Parton 


PK3 

his   neighbors   who 


tells  in  an  excellent  story,  for  the  lord  of  the 
mansion  and  respectfully  saluted  it.  But  the 
things  that  became  as  inflexible  as  ice  with  cold 
changed  with  heat  to  the  consistency  of  molasses. 
When,  at  the  advent  of  winter,  you  went  to  look 
for  the  shoes  that  you  had  put  away  in  the 
spring,  all  you  could  find  was  a  shapeless  lump  of 
something  which  resembled  pitch.  Some  deco- 
rous gentlemen  among  us, 
adds  Mr.  Parton,  can  re- 
member that  in  the  noctur- 
nal combats  of  their  college 
days  a  flinty  rubber  shoe  in 
cold  weather  proved  highly 
efficacious  as  a  weapon. 

How  could  this  material, 
which  promised  so  much 
through  its  waterproof  qual- 
ity, be  combined  with  ingredients  that  would  pre- 
vent it  from  hardening  with  the  cold  or  soften- 
ing with  the  heat  ?  That  was  the  question  which 
Charles  Goodyear  set  himself  to  solve,  the  question 
that  confronted  him  with  the  wolf  of  starvation,  the 
taunts  of  friends  and  the  bitterest  disappointment 
at  the  moment  when  his  ear  seemed  to  catch  the 
long-deferred  answer.  When  the  answer  eventu- 
ally came,  Goodyear  told  of  his  struggles  in  a 


book  made  of  rubber  —  a  volume  of  six  hundred 
and  twenty  pages,  with  covers  of  rubber  and 
pages  of  rubber,  no  other  material  about  it,  inside 
or  out,  than  rubber,  which  changed  neither  with 
heat  nor  cold,  and  possessed  all  the  properties 
which  had  hitherto  been  wanting.  It  cost  him 
two  millions  of  dollars  to  learn  the  secret,  and  the 
annals  of  invention  contain  no  greater  instance  of 
heroic  devotion  and  unfaltering  hope  than  is 
afforded  in  the  many  links  in  the  chain  of  experi- 
ments by  which  he  finally  triumphed.  As  he 
failed  again  and  again,  his  friends  forsook  him ;  he 
was  imprisoned  for  debt,  and  within  the  walls  of 
the  prison  still  continued  his  experiments.  Often 
the  secret  seemed  to  be  within  his  grasp,  but 
as  he  reached  for  it,  it  would  evade  him.  Once 
it  occurred  to  him  that  perhaps  it  was  the  turpen- 
tine used  in  dissolving  the  gum  or  the  lampblack 
employed  to  color  it  that  spoiled 
his  product.  He  esteemed  it  a  rare 
piece  of  luck  to  procure  some  of  the 
sap  not  smoked  and  still  liquid.  On 
going  to  the  shed  where  the  precious 
sap  was  deposited,  he  was  accosted 
by  an  Irishman  in  his  employ,  who 
in  high  glee  informed  him  that  he 
had  discovered  the  secret,  pointing 


to  his  overalls,  which  he  had  dipped  into  the  sap 
and  which  were  nicely  coated  with  firm  India  rub- 
ber. For  a  moment  he  thought  that  Jerry  might 
have  blundered  into  the  secret.  The  man,  how- 
ever, sat  down  on  a  barrel  near  the  fire,  and,  on 
attempting  to  rise,  found  himself  glued  to  his 
seat  and  his  legs  stuck  together.  He  had  to  be 
cut  out  of  his  overalls. 

It  was  an  accident  at  last 
that  opened  the  way  to  dis- 
covery of  the  process  of  vul- 
canization for  which  Good- 
year was  seeking.  At  Wo- 
burn  one  day,  in  the  spring 
of  1839,  he  was  standing 
with  his  brother  and  several 
other  persons  near  a  very 
hot  stove.  He  held  in  his  hand  a  mass  of  his 
compound  of  sulphur  and  gum,  upon  which  he  was 
expatiating  in  his  usual  vehement  manner — the 
company  exhibiting  the  indifference  to  which  he 
was  accustomed.  In  the  crisis  of  his  argument 
he  made  a  violent  gesture  which  brought  the 
mass  in  contact  with  the  stove,  which  was  hot 
enough  to  melt  India  rubber  instantly;  upon 
looking  at  it  a  moment  after,  he  perceived  that 
his  compound  had  not  melted  in  the  least  degree ! 


It  had  charred  as  leather  chars,  but  no  part  of  the 
surface  had  dissolved .  There  was  not  a  sticky 
place  upon  it.  To  say  that  he  was  astonished  at 
this  would  but  faintly  express  his  ecstasy  of 
amazement.  The  result  was  absolutely  new  to 
all  experience  —  India  rubber  not  melting  in  con- 
tact with  red-hot  iron  !  He  felt  as  Columbus  felt 
when  he  saw  the  land  bird  alighting  upon  his  ship 
and  the  driftwood  'floating  by.  In  a  few  years 
more  his  labors  were  crowned  with  success.  In 
the  words  of  Mr.  Parton,  who  has  kindly  placed 
his  researches  at  our  disposal, 
Goodyear  gave  to  the  arts  not 
a  new  material  merely,  but  a  new 
class' of  materials,  applicable  to 
a  thousand  diverse  uses.  His 
product  had  more  than  the  elas-' 
ticity  of  India  rubber,  while  it 
was  divested  of  all  those  proper- 
ties which  had  lessened  its  utility.  RUBBER  BISCUIT 
It  was  still  India  rubber,  but  its  surfaces  would 
not  adhere,  nor  would  it  harden  at  any  degree 
of  cold  nor  soften  at  any  degree  of  heat.  It 
was  a  cloth  impervious  to  water.  It  was 
paper  that  would  not  tear.  It  was  parchment 
that  would  not  crease.  It  was  leather  which 
neither  rain  nor  sun  would  injure.  It  was  ebony 


that  could  be  run  into  a  mold.  It  was  ivory  that 
could  be  worked  like  wax.  It  was  wood  that  never 
cracked,  shrunk,  nor  decayed.  It  was  metal, 
"  elastic  metal,"  as  Daniel  Webster  termed  it,  that 
could  be  wound  round  the  finger  or  tied  into  a 
knot,  and  which  preserves  its  elasticity 
almost  like  steel.  Trifling  variations 
in  the  ingredients,  in  the  pro- 
portions and  in  the  heating 
made  it  either  as  pliable  as  kid,  tougher  than  ox 
hide,  as  elastic  as  whalebone  or  as  rigid  as  flint. 
The  increase  in  the  value  of  the  crude  material  and 
the  importation  of  it  can  well  be  imagined. 


GROTESQUE   FORMS   IN  WHICH    RUBBER 
SOMETIMES  COMES. 

THE  HOME  OF 
THE  RUBBER  GATHERER. 

THE  scenes  that  surround  the  home  of  the 
rubber  gatherer  on  the  Amazon  are  weird 
in  the  extreme.  Think  of  a  forest  whose  silence 
is  unbroken  by  the  voice  of  man,  where  even  the 
sunshine  refuses  to  penetrate,  and  all  is  dark, 
gloomy  and  foreboding.  Fierce  jaguars,  deadly 
serpents,  birds  of  brilliant  plumage  and  the  rub- 
ber gatherer  are  the  sole  tenants.  In  a  small, 
thatched  hut,  built  on  piles — for  his  rude  cabin 
nearly  always  stands  in  the  water — is  the  dwell- 
ing place  of  the  half  Indian,  half  negro  who  taps 
the  rubber  tree.  Close  by  is  the  rubber  grove,  and 
thither  the  worker  wends  his  way  at  daybreak  to 
gather  the  precious  gum.  With  a  small,  sharp 
instrument,  somewhat  resembling  a  hatchet,  an 


incision  is   made  in  the  tree  and  a  diminutive 

earthenware  cup  is  placed  below  it  to  catch  the 

flow.     In  many  respects  the  - 

operation  is  akin  to  the  gath- 
ering of  maple-sap  in  New 

England.     The  sap  from 

the  rubber  tree  flows  into 

the  cup  and  at  night  the 

entire   yield   is   gathered 

into   one   huge   earthen- 
ware jug  or  calabash  and 

brought     to     the     huts. 

Some  trees  yield  from  ten  to 

thirty   cups,    and   one   worker 

may  attend  from  one  hundred 

and  ten  to  one  hundred  and  forty  trees,  so  that 
day's  work  is  apt  to  be  highly  remunerative. 
The  contents  of  the  calabash  now  resembles  a 
huge  pan  of  milk,  and  to  make  from 
|        this  the  crude  rubber  requires  a 
skillful  and  peculiar  manipulation, 
preparations  for  which  have  been 
going  on  meanwhile. 
>'  A  smoldering  fire  of  palm  nuts 
ready,  the  smoke  from  which 
transforms   the    gum    into   crude 
rubber.        To     concentrate     this 


CUABA5B 


smoke  a  jug-shaped  earthenware  vessel,  con- 
structed to  answer  the  purpose  of  a  chimney,  is 
placed  over  the  fire,  and  through  the  orifice  pours 
the  dense  smoke  caused  by 
the  burning  palm  nuts. 

Fancy  a  man  sitting  in  a 
small  hut,  with  no  ventila- 
tion, and  this  thick,  heavy 
smoke  filling  the  atmosphere ! 
A  white  man  would  suffocate 
in  a  few  moments,  but  the 
rubber  smoker  goes  on,  oblivious  to  his  surround- 
ing discomforts.  He  now  takes  an  implement 
much  resembling  a  long-handled  wooden  spade, 
the  blade  being  round  instead  of  square.  Dip- 
ping this  in  the  gum,  he  holds  it  over  the  smoke 
till  the  discoloration  is  complete ;  he  then  repeats 
this  operation  again  and  again  till  the  requisite 
thickness  is  obtained.  When  . ,.  ; 
sufficiently  thick,  the  mass  is  ^  '(j^^. 
cut  from  the  mold  and  sold  to  ^S 
traders,  who  take  it  down  the  m 
river  in  small  boats  and  ca- 
noes. From  whatever  cause, 
the  rubber  thus  prepared  is 
the  finest  in  the  world.  Rub- 
ber is  grown  in  Africa,  Asia, 


Assam,  India,  Singapore,  Central 
and  South  America,  but  only  on  the 
Upper  Amazon  is  the  finest  grade 
of  rubber  produced. 

Down  the  stream  go  the  lumps  of 
crude  rubber  or  biscuits,  as  they  are 
called,  and  they  finally  reach  Para,  the 
chief  city  on  the  Amazon. 
Para  is  the  great  rubber  city  of  the 
world.  It  is  also  the  headquarters  for  all  goods 
coming  and  going  on  the  Upper  Amazon.  It  is 
a  quaint  half  Portuguese,  half  Brazilian 
town,  with  long  rows  of  low, 
flat,  white  houses,  with  red 
roofs,  and  derives  its 
chief  importance  from 
its  connection  with  the 
rubber  groves.  Its  so- 
ciety is  strictly  divid- 
ed into  two  classes — 
the  merchants  and  the 
natives.  Most  of  the 
merchants  are  Portu- 
guese, English  or 
American.  They  en- 
tertain with  characteristic  Southern  hospitalit 
and  do  what  they  can  to  reduce  the  friction  of 


business  to  the  minimum. 
During  the  heat  of  the  day 
the  merchant  retires  to  his 
home  in  the  suburbs  and 
takes  a  short  siesta.  At 
four  o'clock  he  returns  to 
business,  the  heat  being  on 
the  decline.  There  is  none 
of  that  bustle  common  to 
American  cities,  and  matters 
move  along  in  a  humdrum  sort  of  a  way  that 
would  simply  torture  the  active  Yankee. 

Leaving  Para,  the  rubber  is  soon  on  its  way 
to  New  York,  where  swift-sailing  steamers  quickly 
land  it,  and  now  begin  the  operations  that  trans- 
form raw  rubber  into  rubber  boots  and  shoes. 


FACTORY  NO.  I,  BOSTON  RUBBER  SHOE  CO. 


PROGRESS. 

IF  Charles  Goodyear  were  alive  to-day  he  could 
discover  nothing  connected  with  his  invention 
in  which  so  great  an  improvement  has  been  made 
as  in  the  manufacture  of  rubber  shoes  of  the  best 
quality.  In  shape,  durability,  and  comfort  there 
is  no  comparison  between  those  experimented  on 
by  him  and  those  which  are  now  shipped  to  every 
city,  town  and  village  in  the  United  States  and 
to  all  parts  of  the  world  by  the  Boston  Rubber 
Shoe  Company.  The  most  dainty  Parisian  fash- 
ions in  footwear  are  reproduced  in  rubber  with 
such  perfection  that  the  material  has  the  appear- 
ance of  the  finest  patent  leather. 


"How  many  styles  do  you  make ? "  the  writer 
of  this  souvenir  had  occasion  to  ask  one  of  the 
officials  of  the  Boston  Rubber  Shoe  Company, 
and,  to  his  amazement,  the  reply  was,  "  Over  one 
thousand  styles  and  widths." 

"How  many  pairs  a  day?" 

"  Oh,  about  forty-five  thousand." 

Forty-five  thousand  pairs  a  day ! 

Nine  million  pairs  a  year! 

A  hurried  calculation  shows  that  if  this  number 
of  shoes  were  put  toe  to  heel  they  would  reach 
from  New  York  City  to  Lisbon,  Portugal. 

Packed  in  cases,  each  one  foot  deep,  they 
would  cover  thirty  acres — would  make  seven 
Bunker  Hill  Monuments,  and  would  fill  900 
freight  cars. 

The  Boston  Rubber  Shoe  Company  is  the  great- 
est producer  of  rubber 
boots  and  shoes  in  the 
world,  and  our  con- 
templative friend  who 
sits  before  his  fire  must 
visit,  in  his  mind's  eye, 
at  least,  such  an  estab- 
lishment before  his 
panorama  is  complete. 
He  has  seen  the  early 


voyageurs  pondering  over  the  gum  for  which  the 
savage  found  so  many  uses ;  he  has  had  a  glimpse 
of  Goodyear's  persistent  toils,  and  of  the 
transportation  of  the  rubber  down 
.  the  Amazon  and  on  the  Atlantic. 
The  last  scene  is  in  New  England, 
on  the  edge  of  Middlesex  Fells, 
and  in  a  group  of  factories  which 
in  extent  and  equipment  are  with- 
out rivals. 

The    making  of  a  rubber 
shoe  is  not  the  commonplace 
affair  that  might  be  supposed. 
"""•%•"  It  takes  "nine  men  to  make 

a  pin,"  they   say, 
but  to  make  a  rub- 
ber  shoe   it    requires   many  more. 
There  are  washers,  grinders,  sheeters, 
cutters,  makers,  varnishers,  vulcan- 
izers,  strippers,  inspectors,  packers 
and  shippers  engaged  on  every  pair 
of  shoes  manufactured ! 

The  crude  rubber  goes  first  into 
the  hands  of  the  grinder,  who  places 
the  huge  leathery  biscuits  in  the  jaws 
of  ponderous  cylinders  that  quickly 
grind  them  up.  It  comes  out,  no 


longer  in  balls,  but  in  huge  lumpy  sheets,  like  the 
unwashed  fleece  of  a  sheep.  These  sheets  go  to 
the  drying  room  to  remain  about  a  month,  only  to 
be  again  run  through  huge  steel  rollers,  from 


FIRST   PROCESS. — GRINDING  CRUDE   RUBBER. 

which  they  come  out  much  thinner  and  smoother. 
They  are  then  run  through  a  set  of  rollers 
together  with  a  web  of  cloth,  making  the  rubber 
fabric  from  which  boots  and  shoes  are  constructed. 


The  cutter  takes  the  sheets  of  rubber  cloth  and 
with  tin  patterns  cuts  out  the  various  pieces 
for  the  different  styles  of  boots  and  shoes. 

The  makers  next  take  the  different  pieces  and 
put  them  together,  forming  the  boot  or  shoe  over 
wooden  lasts,  without  a  stitch  or  a  tack,  as  all 


CUTTERS  AT  WORK 


the  overlapping  edges  are  adhesive  and,  when 
once  rolled  down  firmly  with  a  hand-roller  to  force 
out  the  bubbles  of  air  which  might  cause  a  blister 
later  on,  they  are  taken  to  the  varnishers,  who, 
surrounding  a  small,  square  table  with  a  large 
pan  in  the  centre,  dip  their  brushes  into  the 


pan  and  apply  a  coat- 
ing to  the  shoes. 

Placed  on  iron  cars, 
they  are  propelled 
along  an  iron  track 
into  a  huge  oven, 
where  the  temperature 
is  about  '300°.  A 
confinement  of  many 
hours  is  required  to  accomplish  the  vulcanizing 
process,  which  is  the  most  delicate  and  trouble- 
some process  of  all,  for  if  the  temperature  should 
reach  a  few  degrees  too  high  or  fall  a  few  degrees 
too  low,  on  a  single  "  batch,"  thousands  of  dollars 
worth  of  rubber  boots  and  shoes  would  be  ren- 
dered practically  worthless.  The  goods  are  next 


VARNISHERS. 


PACKING   ROOM. 


t*l  '  sent  to  the  inspectors, 
packers  and  shippers, 
to  reappear  later  in  a 
tempting  array  in  the 
local  shoe  stores  in 
every  part  of  the  Uni- 
ted States. 

This  is  only  a  hur- 
ried and  brief  sketch  of 
»file  various  operations 
which  at  every  stage 
require  skilled  labor,  sagacious  supervision  and 
the  use  of  the  highest  grade  of  material.  There 
are  rubber  shoes  and  rubber  shoes,  of  course,  but 
the  rubber  shoe  that  looks 
well  and  wears  well  is  the 
result  of  not  only  the  most 
conscientious  labor  and  long 
experience,  but  of  the  in- 
vestment of  enormous  cap- 
ital. Such  a  shoe  is  that 
of  the  Boston  Rubber  Shoe 
Company ! 

No  other  rubber  company 
in  the  world  has  the  connec- 
tions and  influence  in  securing  the  highest  quality 
of    raw    material,   the  facilities  and  capacity  for 


STVLES  OF    1857. 


manufacturing  it  and  the  confidence  of  the  public 
in  buying  the  finished  product  that  the  Boston 
Rubber  Shoe  Company  has  earn- 
ed and  established  in  the  thirty- 
seven  years  that  it  has  devoted; 
to  developing  this  industry;  so 
when  you  buy  a  pair  of  rubber 
boots  or  overshoes  insist  upon 
having  those  with  this  stamp  on  the  bottom,  for 
they  are  the  best  that  can  be  made. 

In  the  group  of  factories  owned  by  that  Com- 
pany many  things  are  combined  to  secure  preem- 
inence. The  buildings  themselves  were  built 
solely  for  the  purpose  for  which  they  are  now 
used.  The  arrangements  of  light,  heat  and 
ventilation  —  all  important  factors  in  a  busi- 
ness of  this  kind  — are  perfect.  Everything  per- 


FACTORY  NO.  2,  BOSTON  RUBBER  SHOE  CO. 


taining  to  the  manu- 
facture of  a  rubber 
shoe  is  carried  on  un- 
der the  Company's 
own  roofs.  Even  the 
dyeing  of  the  cloth 
linings,  an  apparently 
insignificant  item,  is 
so  large  with  it  that 
it  dyes  all  its  own 
goods  on  its  own 
premises.  Railroad 
trains  run  into  its 

own  yards,  and  every  facility  is  offered  for  the 
quick  handling  of  what  is  undoubtedly  the  largest 
business  of  its  kind  in  the  world.  This  great 
concern  manufactures  nearly  forty-five  thousand 
pairs  of  boots  and  shoes  per  day,  as  we  have  said, 
-which  means  that  the  product  of  a  single  week's 
work  of  its  factories  would  be  sufficient  to  shoe 
an  army  three  times  greater  than  Grant's  at  Shiloh 
—  and  that  would  take  three  days  to  pass  a  given 
point,  marching  two  abreast.  More  than  three 
thousand  persons  find  employment  there  and 
receive  every  consideration  to  which  conscien- 
tious employees  are  entitled.  A  library  has  been 
organized,  in  which  helpful  and  interesting  books 


abound,  a  librarian  selected  from  among  them- 
selves being  in  charge.  A  savings  bank  is  pro- 
vided, and  habits  of  thrift  greatly  encouraged 
thereby.  Neat  little  cottages  are  also  owned  by 
the  Company,  and  these  are  rented  at  reasonable 
prices  to  the  men  with  families. 

Our  friend  of  the  fireside  wakes  up  from  his 
revery  and  finds  a  member  of  the  family  at  his 
side. 

"What  are  you  dreaming  about?"  the  new- 
comer inquires. 

"A  pair  of  rubber  shoes,"  is  the  answer. 

"A  pair  of  rubber  shoes  !  There's  not  much  to 
think  about  in  them." 

"More  than  you  suppose;  listen," — and  the 
dreamer  tells  what  he  has  seen  "  From  the  Forest 
to  the  Foot." 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


